15 Jun 08

I laid some woven veneer in a small fiberglass mold of the joint along the front fender this morning and put in a vacuum bag with just a mist of water on it. We wanted to see if it would take a set and make it easier to lay up later. It didn't hold much shape, but it was worth a try and still might be worth doing. When I finished this, Caroline and I started working on hanging the flank mold from the roof of the lean-to to be able to bolt it to the nose mold. We worked at it for a while, and Hunt came and helped. I worked on running the bolts through and tightening them for a while, after which I started on cleaning up the other flank mold to be mounted. Caroline helped me wash and wax it with 2 coats. We used tacky tape between the flanges to give us an air tight seal needed for later vacuuming. I had the mold released from its base and ready to hang by lunchtime. After lunch, Hunt helped Caroline and me hang the 2nd flank mold, and I ran the bolts through and tightened it up. I ground the edges on the 2 flank laminates and the nose laminate to insure a smooth transition with no overlaps, and I crawled in the mold and waxed all the seams liberally. While I was working on all this, Hunt was busy making a setup of rotary razor blades spaced 1/8" apart for slitting the veneer for our next weave. He spaced the blades with polycarbonate. Caroline and I reaped the weave from the loom and used it to make the inner layer of the tail mold. We spent a couple hours covering the mold with balsa, woven veneer, peel ply, and bleeder ply before going in for dinner. After we ate, we came back out and put the vacuum line all the way around with mold, holding it down with spray adhesive and peel ply strips. Tomorrow, we will be ready to glue infuse the tail piece as soon as we get our glue. Once we have this piece, we will join all the body panels together to make the shell.